


Love, Lack Thereof

by ohjustdisarmalready



Series: And I 'verse [7]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Non-Sexual Slavery, Worst fears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-02-24 00:00:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13201377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohjustdisarmalready/pseuds/ohjustdisarmalready
Summary: What is Lup's greatest fear?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Guess who saw Thor: Ragnarok and promptly drowned in sibling feelings? THIS DUDE.
> 
> Also is it weird that Heimdall is almost exactly my headcanon for Kravitz? If he was like, alive?
> 
> Also also: I would marry Heimdall. If he asked. Hey dude, you're all-seeing, just puttin' it out there.

Lup knew before it appeared.

This planet had hurt each of them, shown her her teammates at their worst, shown her what may yet become of them. It showed you your greatest fear, your biggest regret, and your proudest moment.

Lup knew what hers would be.

She held on to Barry’s hand and put her arm around Taako as they materialized in an illusory Starblaster. Not her regret, then. Not her proudest moment, either.

Her greatest fear.

Taako’s arm came around her shoulders and Magnus loomed at her back. His greatest fear had been watching, body broken, unable to protect them as they were slaughtered wholesale. He couldn’t protect them from this, either.

An illusory, fake, _not real_ Taako appeared in front of her, unconscious on a complex arcane circle whose lines squiggled and shifted when she looked at them. It was hard to tell if he was breathing or not without approaching.

Lup did not approach.

“Okay, I died, great, let’s move on,” the real Taako called out to nothing. The image didn’t waver.

The fake Taako gasped for breath. His eyes opened, rolling, afraid, before focusing on her.

“Lulu?” he asked, and Lup stumbled forward. She could feel the tears running down her cheeks already.

“Hey, Koko,” she said, grinning tentatively, just like she did in her wildest fantasies, just like she did in her worst nightmares. “We did it.”

She touched his cheek and he felt real. Behind her, the real Taako made an aborted sound. Surprise, maybe. Hurt. This was the best case scenario, after all.

“Lup,” croaked the illusion. It wasn’t real. None of this was real.

“It’s okay now, it’s okay. You’re free,” she reassured him, and because she always imagined she would, she reached forward and wrapped a blanket around his shoulders.

“Don’t touch me!” He scrambled backwards on all fours, stumbling and hurried. She backed up until she hit Magnus and flinched. “Don’t, don’t touch me. Don’t you touch me.”

“I won’t,” she whispered.

“I—I’m free,” murmured Taako. He sat up to look at his hands, and finding no difference, sprung up to pace. “I’m finally—don’t look at me like that.”

He looked in the direction of the crew as a whole, but Lup knew she was the only person here in this scene with him. She shut her eyes, took a deep breath. Opened them again. The illusion wouldn’t pass if she didn’t watch it.

“Don’t look at me,” Taako said again. “Don’t—don’t you ever look at me. You, you—don’t ever look at me again!”

He hugged himself, mirroring Lup. Even in this, they were twins.

“You trapped me! You made me your fucking—I was your _slave_! Was it _fun_ , huh, having poor, soulless, _broken_ Taako hang off your elbow like a doll? Never alone, were you? You made sure of that!” he snarled, hands forming claws as he paced and gestured violently.

“Taako,” she said. No follow-up. No orders. Just, “Taako, please.”

“No! No, I’m not—never again! Never again.” He pulled on his hair, slowed to a halt. Stared at her suspiciously, poisonously. “Is this a game to you? You could have freed me ages ago. You could have tried harder. I was watching you, I know. You _wanted_ me like this.”

And Lup felt every weekend off, every route unexplored, everything they’d agreed they wouldn’t try—but had they agreed? Or had Lup drawn a line in the sand and left Taako to watch it helplessly?

“Taako, babe—” she tried, but he snarled at her.

“I’m not your _babe_ ,” he hissed. “I’m not your _anything_. You made a fuckin’ mistake, letting me loose. But you know what?”

He strode forward, grabbed her by the collar, smiling cruelly. Vengeful.

He seemed taller, now. Or maybe he’d stopped making himself small.

“You’re not going to live to regret—”

Lup cried out as her brother dropped her, staggered; fell to his knees, clutching his chest. A fireball smoked out of it.

Another Taako walked stiffly to him, drawn up to his full height, wand smoking. He set his foot on his shoulder and pushed him to the floor.

“You made my sister cry, you son of a bitch,” Taako—the real Taako, her brother, she loves him so much, may every god bend the world to keep this from being her real future—hissed, and cast magic missile. The final nail in the coffin.

The Starblaster was gone, the other Taako was gone, and all that was left was the somber crew and her furious, precious brother.

He stood over where his corpse had been for a moment, shaking with rage. Barry reached for her but she pushed him away. She would face this alone.

Taako glared at their audience before turning to face her. She couldn’t help but flinch as he approached. It hadn’t even been that bad—they must have cut some of it for time’s sake. He hadn’t even said the bit about not being her brother.

They hadn’t even started on the end where he let her live.

She trembled, and Taako quaked.

He held out his arms. She sprinted the rest of the distance, tears running anew down her face. She hated crying. Taako never knew what to do when she cried.

Just this once, though, he seemed to have figured it out, because he enveloped her in his red robe and held tight, and she held tighter still and sobbed her apologies into his shoulder. For crying, for being put in charge of him, for not finding a solution, for living past that stupid bandit raid when she’d been, what, fourty—

“Don’t you ever,” Taako growled. “Don’t you ever apologize for living, Lup. Don’t do that.”

He rubbed her back too hard and it kind of hurt, but she had to be squeezing the breath out of him and he hadn’t complained. He never complained. He couldn’t complain.

“Gods I’m so sorry, Taako, I’m so sorry,” she blurted into his shoulder, again, uselessly. It was so stupid. She felt bad for not freeing him and here she was making him comfort her. She was so—

He caught her face in his hands, leaned his forehead against hers.

“There is nothing in this world, Lup,” he said, “Nothing in any other. Nothing at all that I regret less than being put with you. You’ve given me the _world_ , Lup. You told me I was a person and you made me believe it.”

He moved his arms back to squeeze her shoulders, but he didn’t move his face, so she didn’t, either.

“I will _never_ forget what you’ve done for me. I will always be so, _so_ grateful that you are my sister. That illusion was a _stupid, bullshit_ illusion that doesn’t know fuck-all about us. I will love you until I die,” Taako promised. He smiled wryly. “Or until I am rendered incapable of love. Here’s for the sweet embrace of death, though, am I right?”

He winked at her and she punched him in the shoulder. Hard.

“Don’t even joke about that, you _asshole_ ,” she gasped, giggling and snorting and still crying a little bit. That was her brother. That was her brother, and he was _trying_. “You can’t—you’re such a dick! I take it back, my real fear is being stuck with this dum-dum for the rest of my life!”

Taako repeated the wink, exaggerated this time.

“Oh no, your worst fears, they’ve already come true,” he gasped dramatically. “Whatever will we do? It’s too late to save you now!”

He tried to get her in a headlock and she wrestled him down to the floor. Lying on his back like his double had, when he’d killed it for hurting her.

“Vengeance will be mine!” she cried, and mussed his hair all to hell.

Yeah, she was scared as hell. Always. But she had her brother and her crew behind her, and that made her unstoppable.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Proudest moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't want to work on what I was supposed to work on and I have missed this 'verse deeply so uhhhhhhhh here

Too soon, the world was dissolving around them, and Lup and Taako helped each other off the floor.

Taako gave their audience a calculating look, but she put a quelling hand on his arm. No need to fuck shit up and get himself in trouble with these things. They still had a good shot at getting the Light through this gauntlet.

And luckily, the scene around them swirled into a dark forest clearing that she knew was well off the road. It had taken them all day to get out there and she’d been too nervous to wait any longer, but they were far enough out that no one would hear a scream and she’d researched so hard.

The scene shifted with her as she jostled a much younger Taako’s shoulder, making a perimeter around the clearing.

“You think this’ll work?” she said, gesturing around like she had at the time. The real Taako took it in with a fond smile while his younger self stared solemnly.

“It’s open and far away from the road,” he agreed. “You’re not gonna get hurt, are you? With the soul thing? And if my bosses come you’ll be careful?”

He sparked a line across their shared soul and Lup zinged with the memory. She laughed, because she’d been young and felt invincible that night. Unstoppable.

“No one’s gonna notice a thing. No one but us. Promise.” The little Taako looked a touch reassured, glancing at the sky and all around him. He wasn’t used to it yet, so his ears remained neutral while his face and posture read two steps from terror.

“I guess we should start, then. You wanted a circle? Is wood okay? I can try stone if you need it. If I do bad at this, will I be…?” He was trying very hard to be neutral, fussing with the grass while Lup paced the length of the clearing, making measurements. Barry looked pained, though whether it was at their terrible scientific method or their intent was hard to say.

She laughed, because her past self had laughed, although in retrospect she maybe should have taken his concerns a bit more seriously. If nothing else, just because Taako was terrified. But she’d laughed, and put her arm around him, and said, “Nah, you’re mine now. We’re twins. You can’t separate twins.”

And the little Taako looked at her with big, trusting eyes, and nodded, and said, “Yeah. You can’t separate twins.”

The scene sped up as they transmuted and painted and chalked and measured, and she did feel a little bad looking back at it, because without the blinding sense of pride she could see how Taako stared at the symbols and manifested his soul when she wasn’t looking, and the fine tremble in his hands that he shook away irritably when he was painting in details, and how often he glanced at her and steeled himself.

She hadn’t gotten good yet at asking him how he really felt about things, and he hadn’t learned how to tell her. When she remembered her younger self turning around, finally ready, Taako was blank-faced and complacent.

“You ready for this?” she asked, following her role. The little Taako nodded as the current Taako looked on intently, warmly. She wouldn’t be surprised if this was one of his better memories, too.

The younger Taako—Taaquito—moved to stand in the center of the circle, and Lup caught his arm.

“We’re gonna get you better,” she said, cringing a little. She was not a diplomat as a child. “We’re gonna fix you.”

Taaquito looked placidly at her, having reached and surpassed peak panic.

“If that’s what you want,” he said. She nodded and grinned at him.

“Of course! It’s gonna be great, Koko, it’s gonna work!” In retrospect, why had she been so eager to try this out immediately? What if it hadn’t worked? The rudimentary ritual they’d set up didn’t have any of the safeguards they’d later develop, and it worked on faith and desire more than anything. One wrong step could have seriously fucked Taako up. What the hell had she been thinking?

But current Taako was smiling fondly at the scene, relaxed, and Lup couldn’t be too upset. Maybe she hadn’t been as careful as she would be later, but to let him be free like this, yeah, that was worth it. She had to start somewhere.

Taaquito manifested their soul and surrounded himself in it. He’d always been better at manipulating it than Lup—she’d had a hell of a time even getting to be consciously aware of it, she was too used to it—but Lup had concentrated on wrapping it around him as best she could, a big Taako burrito of soul that could stand between him and the worse consequences of his new deviance.

The wooden circle began to glow, and Taaquito gave her an awkward attempt at a smile as magical energy built up around him. She returned it as sparks came off the edges of their arcana and the wood began lightly smoking, hands on the markings and mind on her brother, feeling some something that hooked deep into him and touching it.

She’d never been able to write down exactly what it felt like, later, touching into Taako’s magical essence. Not for lack of trying. The best she could think of was fishing, really.

She and Taako liked fishing. It was free food, it was calming, no one yelled at you for not working hard enough, it was fantastic. One time they’d been in a fishing village and one of the fishmongers offered them a fair price for any salmon they’d managed to catch in the river nearby, and they’d spent most of their time there for almost a month.

Lup had caught this huge fish one day. It was a largemouth bass, not in season and too grizzled-looking to sell for much, but she clearly hadn’t been the first to catch it.

The thing had three separate fishing hooks stuck in its mouth and some bit of metal stuck in its side that’d been there so long scales were growing over it. The hooks pierced right through the thin skin around its fish lip area and one of them left scars where the barbs were. Another had really gotten into the meat of the thing and Lup hadn’t been able to find most of it. The fish had thrashed so hard when she’d tried to ease it out that she’d dropped it back into the river, and Taako had shrugged and told her better luck next time.

That was kind of what Taako felt like, on a metaphysical level.

It wasn’t exactly a quick metaphor. Lup had written it down in one of her reference notebooks just in case she ever needed it, but she’d gotten distracted trying to detail the exact feeling of Taako’s tangible metaphysical rulebook where it stabbed him through the core and wound up with three pages of incomprehensible nonsense and a stress migraine. And whenever she asked Taako about it, he’d shrug and say he couldn’t feel it the same way she did. He had no idea that he lived with impalement, because he thought it was a part of him.

That night, this night, her proudest choice, had led her to decades of research. She gasped as her younger self had upon knowing, for the first time, what Taako lived with. How many bolts and bindings were screwed into him so deeply he couldn’t even feel the wound anymore. And she felt, for a moment, the horror, the confusion.

She’ looked on the glowing life-but-not-life and its glittering mutilation, the shifting that she’d thought at the time might be breath, the placid nervousness, the passive fear from her heart as she saw him for the first time as the monster people said he was.

She’d stared at the delicate threads and strict bars wrapped around and pierced through _her brother_.

 _This can’t be my brother_ , she’d thought. _This thing can’t be_ …

And her hands had clenched into fists, and her jaw had tightened all on its own until it ached. Her magic rose with her fury and flooded the circle, searing veins of power into the air and snapping wildly around Taako, lightning whips of pure energy that she could recognize now as a bond flaring up.

Taako had remained in the circle, eyes closed, concentrating on not fighting her. Waiting for her to do what she would to him because he couldn’t do anything else, because of those fucking _rules_ made by some evil fuck who would _never_ know her brother.

The memory saturated in glowing-white light as her magic overwhelmed them and the ritual it was supposed to power. She’d overshot the circle entirely and left a protective buffer around her brother by sheer force of will. Ever since that night, she’d gotten something of a tingle when Taako was trying to pull some shit that would hurt him, but the real proudest moment was yet to come.

The memory faded back in as her past self woke up in the clearing, ash still falling like snow to cover everything in fine powder (“What the fuck,” she heard Barry say). The younger Taako groaned.

“That fucking hurt,” he whined, and they’d both stared at each other for a moment, startled.

“What?” she asked, and Taako just stared. “Did you just…?”

“I—I’m sorry, I—I—I—” Taako said, but she’d already dashed through the soot, barely bothering to get to her feet as she jostled his shoulders and brushed ash out of (into) his hair.

“Taako, that’s fantastic! That’s great! You just complained!” she brought the memory in for a hug and he stood stiffly.

“I, I. I guess I…did?” he asked, dazed. “That’s a good thing?”

“Absolutely,” Lup gushed. She’d treated him to a stolen cookie the next day, she remembered. It had had frosting on it and it’d been the most decadent thing either of them had seen in their lives, at least in-world. Taako had hesitantly insisted on sharing and she’d been too thrilled to bother protesting.

“I guess I did what you wanted,” Taako said. “That felt…kinda…I mean, uh, feelings, hah, what? I, um. That.”

He leaned hard into the hug in his Taako way, putting all his weight on her to reciprocate when he wasn’t sure entirely what to do with his arms.

“Thanks, Lup,” he said. It sounded like he’d wanted to say something else, but he didn’t. He just did his very best to fuse into her ribcage.

Lup stumbled forward as the memory faded away.

“And I haven’t stopped complaining since,” the real, actual Taako said wryly. “What a beautiful memory.”

Barry shook his head. “I give up. I give up, you two. I’m throwing in the hat.”

Lup grinned or bared her teeth. She had had a long day, okay, she wasn’t gonna deal with his ‘your scientific ethics are questionable at best’ shit. “Can’t stand the heat, get out the kitchen.”

He took a breath to speak, exasperated, but Taako nudged him.

“Hey,” she heard him say, softly. “She set me free, my dude. She let me go.”

“No, no! It’s not—I mean yeah, that’s definitely a thing that I have to work through later, but—you just vaporized a forest. You put Mordenkainen’s Circle on _transmuted wood_ in fucking _whitewash_ ,” he groaned. “You didn’t even get it right. That’s thousands of years of obsessive study that you just decided to tweak, at fucking, however old you are there. And then you just—Lucretia. Tell me you also think they’re insane.”

Lucretia nodded solemnly. “I gave up on them when we realized they hadn’t seen Fantasy The Matrix.”

“What? That has—Lucretia,” Barry complained. “I’m talking about their magical bullshit. You know you’re breaking all the rules, right? Like, all of them. How were you using bonds as an intentional power source at that age? You vaporized a forest. Neither of you should have made it to adulthood.”

“That’s what they always said about me, too,” Magnus commiserated, thumping Taako on the back. Taako pitched dramatically to the ground, wheezing.

“Hey, fucko, you killed my brother,” Lup said, nudging him with her foot. “Does this mean I get those gloves?”

“Fuck off,” Taako groaned. “My dying wish is for you to bury me with them. You can’t ignore my dying wish.”

“Can’t she?” Magnus asked. Davenport was rolling his eyes. “I’ve seen those gloves. I think your dying wish is for me to have them.”

“Obviously, they go to Merle,” Davenport said. “As a weregild. I seem to remember an aloe—”

He was cut off when the ground under him formed a large hand and pounced, and he was forced to roll out of the way.

“No one speaks of the aloe vera!” Taako exclaimed, jumping to his feet. “Nope! Not happening! No one! Nope!”

“Wait, what’s this about my aloe vera?” Merle asked, just now beginning to pay attention. “Oh, shit, the memory’s over. Good times.”

“Don’t even bother, old man,” Taako said, swinging around Magnus to hide from retaliation. “Don’t worry about it!”

 _If you’re quite finished_ , their hosts said. _You still have one memory more, elf_.

Taako dropped from Magnus’s shoulders and the crew herded closer to her. She held out a hand for Taako and one for Barry, and Magnus hovered at her back.

She squared her shoulders. Biggest regret.

Well, fuck that. She had her family with her and her brother was freer than he’d ever been. There was nothing she couldn’t face.

“Let’s go,” she said, and faced her demons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah rmr when I said I wouldn't work on anything else until Stop Me was complete? lol
> 
> Please do tell me what you think!

**Author's Note:**

> I have her biggest regret and proudest moment and also all three for Taako in my head, but I probs won't write it. The last thing I need is another WIP, I think at that point i would need to be put out of my misery.
> 
> This fic can be as canon as you want it to be, we're all making shit up anyway. I won't be writing every single cycle, so this could be one of them. If you want to say it never happened, though, no skin off my back.


End file.
